The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Friday, February 24, 2017

Saboteurs set on bringing down a president.

Saboteurs in the U.S. intelligence community posing as patriots
have been working hard to drive President Donald Trump from the White
House.

Former National Security Agency intelligence analyst and former War College professor John R. Schindler bragged on Twitter last week about the spy-led plot his friends are conducting against the president.

“Now we go nuclear,” he tweeted. “IC [intelligence community] war [is]
going to new levels. Just got an [email from] senior IC friend, it
began: ‘He will die in jail.'”

“US intelligence is not the
problem here,” Schindler added. “The President’s collusion with Russian
intelligence is. Many details, but the essence is simple.”

[T]he still-forming Trump administration is already doing serious
harm to America’s longstanding global intelligence partnerships. In
particular, fears that the White House is too friendly to Moscow are
causing close allies to curtail some of their espionage relationships
with Washington—a development with grave implications for international
security, particularly in the all-important realm of counterterrorism.

People like Schindler think they know what’s best for America in terms
of national security and foreign policy. Allowing an outsider like
Donald Trump to do the job Americans elected him to do is unthinkable to
them. So Trump must go.

People of Schindler’s ilk are using
government resources in an effort to overthrow the nation’s duly elected
government. While smiling on TV and assuring the public his
administration was fully cooperating with the Trump transition team,
President Obama gave members of the intelligence community permission to
wage war against then-incoming President Trump.

Before
leaving office President Obama cleared the way for his confederates in
the intel world to ramp up their use of dirty tricks to kick the legs
out from under the incoming Trump administration by changing
intelligence-sharing rules. The goal is to prevent Trump from rolling
back Obama’s poisonous legacy.

The most famous victim so far
of what could be called Obama’s shadow government is National Security
Advisor Mike Flynn, an anti-Islamofascist hardliner who was forced out
of his post Feb. 13 by what appears to be a deep state cabal centered
around the sleazy former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes. As Flynn’s
replacement, Trump has appointed “warrior-scholar” U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

Rhodes and other former Obama administration officials were part of an
intrigue that led to the downfall of Flynn, investigative journalist
Adam Kredo reported at the Washington Free Beacon.

Flynn’s resignation was “the culmination of a secret, months-long
campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap
President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the
nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the
White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a
behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of
damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.”

Kredo isn’t the only one crying foul.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin said Flynn was
targeted. It was “because they were concerned about where Flynn was
going to go in terms of what he was going to recommend to President
Trump.”

The intelligence community “itself has been
politicized,” he told Laura Ingraham. “And I think this is one of the
results — this is one of the things that you’re seeing come out of that
politicization.”

“You’re seeing a guy that is key in the Trump
administration being targeted, and they have used the tools that they
have available to them to bring this guy down,” Boykin said.

Leaks of Trump’s telephone conversations with the leaders of Mexico and
Australia have found their way into the media ecosystem. One gossipy
news website published the ridiculous, unverified “golden showers”
dossier that claims Trump is a urophiliac, of all things, who hired
prostitutes in Moscow to inundate his hotel bed. There is also the
wholly unsupported blanket claim that Russia somehow “hacked” the
election, interfering to help Trump, along with the more specific but
unproven assertion that Russia hacked documents from Hillary Clinton’s
campaign and gave them to WikiLeaks.

In addition to leaking, U.S. intelligence operatives have been
engaging in a gross, seditious form of insubordination that may be
endangering national security. These people have been withholding
sensitive intelligence from the president because they claim to be
worried the data could be leaked or compromised if it reaches the White
House, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Why they think they are allowed to withhold such information from their
ultimate overseer, the democratically elected official whom Article II,
Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution empowers to protect the nation as
“Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” is
unclear.

But these “spooks” who operate in the shadows don’t
have to bother with excuses because they are unaccountable. They defy
our new president’s directives and make public whatever policy they
disagree with in hopes of undermining it. They are the “deep state,”
which, according to one website, is “a body of people, typically
influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to
be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.”
The deep state doesn’t give up its power when a president leaves
office. It stays behind to clandestinely exert its dark influence
regardless of which party controls the White House.

These deep-state dwellers leapt into action in the final weeks of Obama’s presidency.

As the clock ticked, Obama green-lighted
a disturbing relaxation of the rules regulating the National Security
Agency’s ability to circulate globally intercepted personal
communications among the other 16 intelligence agencies, some of which
are more politicized than the NSA, before applying important
longstanding privacy-protection protocols. Before the policy was
altered, the NSA screened out the identities of innocent people and
irrelevant personal information before passing intercepted
communications along to other agencies like the CIA or the FBI’s
intelligence units.

Put another way, 17 days before President
Trump was sworn in, NSA was unleashed against his embryonic
administration, newly empowered to share raw intelligence gathered from
telephone calls and emails that go through network switches outside the
country, as well as messages between people outside the U.S. that go
through domestic network switches.

New rules were issued under section 2.3
of Executive Order 12333 (Dec. 4, 1981) after Obama administration
officials Loretta Lynch, then the attorney general, and James Clapper,
then the national intelligence director, signed off on them on Jan. 3
this year and Dec. 15 last year, respectively. These rules came in the
form of an unclassified document
titled “Procedures for the Availability or Dissemination of Raw Signals
Intelligence Information by the National Security Agency.”

“Now intelligence agencies can search directly through raw repositories
of communications intercepted by the NSA and then apply such rules as
required for minimizing privacy intrusions,” Harry G. Hutchison writes at the American Center for Law and Justice website.

This means “the contents of the conversations engaged in by members of
the Trump Administration and by President Trump himself are now under
an increasing risk that they will be exposed to the public for purposes
of embarrassing the Trump Administration and in order to impede the
effectiveness of his policies.”

The policy change allowed “far
more agents and officials to search through raw intelligence data,” and
accordingly, “it appears that the prospect of intel leaks grew
exponentially.”

Whatever investigation of Flynn took place was
tainted from the start: U.S. intelligence operatives appear to have
spied on him without any reasonable justification. There was no reason
for the FBI to carry out the grilling Flynn reportedly received because
it already possessed the intercepted alleged communication. “There
appears to have been no foreign-intelligence or criminal-investigative
purpose served by the FBI’s interrogation of General Flynn,” former
federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy writes.

A retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, Flynn fell on his sword
for making contact with Kislyak and then lying to Pence about it,
according to the White House.

It's not as if we know what
actually happened with Flynn and the Russian or Russians at this point,
or if there really was any contact at all. News reports have not quoted
any on-the-record sources so it is entirely possible the allegations
against Flynn were conjured out of thin air by Obama holdovers
determined to undermine the Trump administration.

This is the form that what Michael Walsh calls “a rolling coup attempt” against the Trump administration has taken.

Faceless operatives whose highest loyalty is to their jobs and their twisted realpolitik ideology don’t care what American voters think.

Clear majority of Americans support President Trump’s policies against sanctuary cities.

Americans overwhelmingly approve of President Trump’s efforts to clamp down on so-called sanctuary cities, according to the results of a Harvard–Harris poll. The Hillreported the poll’s finding that “80 percent of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by reporting to federal agents the illegal immigrants they come into contact with.” One of the key measures that President Trump has directed his Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to explore is cutting off some federal funds to cities which continue to defy federal immigration laws. "The American people are no longer going to have to be forced to subsidize this disregard for our laws,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.

There are at least 400 sanctuary cities and counties in the United States, which could lose some federal funding as President Trump’s executive order to withhold some federal funding from sanctuary localities is implemented. The nation's 10 largest cities alone could lose as much as $2.27 billion in annual federal funds if they choose to remain sanctuary cities, according to a Reuters analysis of federal grants.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is running for re-election this year, is among the bullheaded city leaders around the country who are willing to sacrifice the safety and welfare of their own citizens to protect illegal aliens – even some with criminal records. De Blasio threatened to take the Trump administration to court if the Trump administration follows through with funding cuts. And the mayor declared his intention to set aside $250 million a year in a reserve fund for four years because of the "huge amount of uncertainty" created by President Trump’s follow-through on one of his key campaign promises. This is money that should be used to pay for vital municipal services such as hiring more police, which would certainly come in handy if illegal aliens with criminal records continue to be allowed to roam the streets of the city.

Going back to the Harvard-Harris poll, its co-director Mark Penn explained, “The public wants honest immigrants treated fairly and those who commit crimes deported and that's very clear from the data.” De Blasio and his cohorts, however, could not care less.

Illegal immigrants make up approximately 3.5 percent of the U.S.’s total population. A significant number of illegal aliens living in the United States have committed crimes while residing here unlawfully in the first place. Even the immigration friendly Migration Policy Institute estimated in a 2015 report that “about 690,000 (6.3 percent) of resident unauthorized immigrants have previously been convicted of a felony or a serious misdemeanor.” The number is probably considerably higher than that, but even 690,000 criminals remaining here illegally is bad enough. According to data compiled from the U.S. Sentencing Commission for fiscal year 2015, illegal immigrants were responsible for 30.2 percent of convictions for kidnapping/hostage taking, 17.8 percent of convictions for drug trafficking, 11.6 percent of convictions for fraud, 10.4 percent of convictions for money laundering, 6.1 percent of convictions for assault, and 5.5 percent of convictions for murder.

Nevertheless, De Blasio and his fellow mayors in other Democratic Party-controlled cities would extend the protections of their sanctuary cities to shield even some illegal aliens with criminal records.

For example, under Mayor de Blasio’s 2014 “Sanctuary City” law, New York City officials do not even notify federal immigration agents about the release of illegal aliens whom have been convicted of crimes that are deemed “minor” by the city. Just recently, an illegal immigrant gang member with a criminal record, including convictions for reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon, was released from prison without so much as first notifying the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). An immigration judge had ruled back in 2015 that this particular illegal alien, Estivan Rafael Marques Velasquez, be removed. Instead of honoring ICE’s request to turn Velasquez over to federal authorities when he completed his most recent sentence for disorderly conduct, city officials did not even give ICE a heads-up before they released him.

“This man is, by his own admission, a member of a violent street gang and he was released back in to the community,” said Thomas Decker, the field-office director for ICE’s New York unit. A City Hall spokesperson dismissed Velasquez’s release as a routine matter regarding which the city felt there was no reason to inform ICE because Velasquez’s offense “does not qualify as a violent or serious felony under the city’s local laws.” Velasquez’s prior convictions for criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment apparently did not faze New York City officials.

Fortunately, in this case, ICE was able to track Velasquez down on its own. However, it had to waste precious time and resources in doing so due to the de Blasio administration's intransigence. Velasquez is now in “detention pending removal,” according to a statement issued by ICE.

Things did not turn out so well in San Francisco in July 2015, when an illegal alienwith seven felony convictions, whom had been previously deported from the U.S. five times, allegedly killed 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle. Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez had allegedly used a stolen gun in firing the bullet that struck Ms. Steinle in the back. The San Francisco sheriff's department had Sanchez in custody, but released him without honoring a detainer request from ICE to hold Sanchez until immigration authorities could pick him up and detain him pending deportation proceedings. San Francisco’s sheriff defended the premature release, saying that his department was simply following procedures and local laws.

San Francisco is estimated to be protecting approximately 30,000 illegal immigrant residents. Instead of reconsidering its coddling of illegal immigrants, even those with criminal records, San Francisco has doubled down. It sued the Trump administration on account of the executive order that President Trump issued targeting sanctuary cities for possible cuts in federal funding. San Francisco’s city attorney, Dennis Herrera, claimed that President Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional because it “tries to turn city and state employees into federal immigration enforcers.”

The Trump administration is not trying to deputize city and state employees against their will to serve as “federal immigration enforcers.” But it does expect that local and state government employees sworn to uphold the law will not go out of their way to frustrate enforcement of judicial removal orders or violate federal law against harboring or shielding from detection any alien who “remains in the United States in violation of law.”

The left can call for “resistance” against President Trump’s policies all they want. However, on illegal immigration and sanctuary cities, the vast majority of Americans are clearly with the president.

A European nation becomes a rape capital -- due to its immigration policies.

Sweden is the rape capital of the Western world. The general public is unaware of the epidemic of Swedish rapes because there has been an orchestrated effort by mainstream media and the Swedish government to deliberately mischaracterize offenders and downplay the number of incidents. The significant increase in rapes are the direct result of Sweden's open door refugee policy and denial of Muslim culture.Muslim immigrant rapists believe that all non-Muslim and uncovered women can be lawfully taken for sexual use; hence rape and sexual assaults are justified. Appearance, particularly for women, is an important aspect of Sharia Islamic law. Modesty is how women achieve honor and to appear in anything revealing brings shame not only for her but for the entire family. Almost all Muslim governments encourage and even legally obligate women to dress modestly: at a minimum to wear a headscarf, in some countries a veil and in others a full body covering.Uncovered women are viewed as prostitutes and adulterers and the prevailing attitude is that if an uncovered woman is raped she asked for it. In September 2006 in a Ramadan sermon on adultery, Australia’s most senior Muslim cleric blamed immodestly dressed women who don't wear hijab for being preyed on by men. Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes in 2000, committed by a group of fourteen Lebanese Australian men, and suggested the attackers were not entirely to blame. Sheik Hilali said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem." That is the psychology of Muslim refugees who have been welcomed into Sweden in extraordinary numbers.Sweden prides itself on its humanitarianism that has accepted more refugees in proportion to size of population than any other nation in the developed world. Unfortunately, this humanitarianism has been at the expense of Swedish women and eventually Swedish culture. This is evident in the increasing mass sexual assaults and rapes committed by migrants at Swedish festivals. In July 2016 at Bravalla, Sweden's largest music festival, there were nearly 40 assaults, including five rapes. A week earlier at Putte i Parken (Party in the Park), a free festival in Karlstad, there were 32 similar sexual attacks where the youngest victim was just twelve years old. The number of attacks is much higher as many women do not report them and there were multiple victims in most reports.Gang rapes of individual Swedish women have been particularly brutal. Infidel uncovered women are viewed as acceptable targets without exception, regardless of age or disability. On October 2, 2016 in the town of Visby on Sweden's Gotland island a wheelchair-bound woman was gang-raped by up to six men at a Swedish migrant center. The woman who was in her 30’s was sharing a taxi home when she asked to use the toilet. Her fellow passenger invited her inside and with five of his buddies viciously raped her in the bathroom for several hours. The six men who were all asylum seekers in their 20s were arrested but released a few days later. The victims’ attorney said, “She got paralyzed in this situation and was not able to bring herself to resist physically, other than saying no.” He added: “She is completely broken down.” From a Western perspective, this seems inexplicable, however from the world view that embraces Sharia law this is perfectly acceptable punishment for an infidel woman. The fact that she was disabled just made her an easier target.In March 2016, a 23-year-old woman was kidnapped at gunpoint by four men in Malmö, Sweden and driven to a hookah bar in Helsingborg where three more men were waiting to rape her. She was pulled by the hair to the basement, her arms and legs were held down, her clothes were ripped off and the men took turns raping her orally, vaginally and anally either singly or in pairs. Only two of the seven suspects were convicted, the others who were charged with aggravated rape and abetting rape were released for lack of evidence. The two men who were convicted were from Kuwait and Syria and arrived in Sweden without identification papers; hence they could not be deported.On January 21, 2017 in Uppsala, Sweden three men broke into a woman’s home armed with guns, tore off her clothes and gang raped her for three hours while livestreaming the whole attack on Facebook. Similar to other horrific rapes, the liberal mainstream media refused to unequivocally identify the offenders as Muslim immigrants. Jihad Watch reported that “The Swedish publication NyheterIdag says that the attackers were “nysvenskar,” that is, “new Swedes,” which is the establishment media euphemism for Muslim migrants.” A 21 year old woman came forward after she saw the Facebook broadcast and stated that she recognized one of the perpetrators who raped her 15 months earlier.In 2016 a Swedish mother of two was gang raped by at least nine Afghan refugees at a refugee camp in Småland Mariannelund, Sweden. She was raped to the sound of laughter and joyful shouts. Forensic scientists found 48 semen stains in the apartment where the rape took place. Sperm from at least four people was recovered from the victim’s rectum and digestive system. According to the courtroom clerk in addition to the sadistic gang rape, the mother of two was close to death because her airways were clogged during the rape. During the trial, the victim repeatedly had to leave the courtroom several times to vomit.These are just a few examples of recent refugee gang rapes in Sweden. If those incidents are not horrifying enough, children, both girls and boys, are also victims of migrant rape gangs. So many children have been raped in Malmö, Sweden that police created a task force of 15 police officers, “with different skills”, to investigate the epidemic of sexual assaults against young people.Unfortunately, government policies prohibit Swedish police from releasing descriptions of criminal suspects. A memo instructed officers to withhold information from the public when reporting all routine crimes, specifically race or nationality to avoid the appearance of being racist. One officer who posted on Facebook that migrants are to blame for the vast majority of serious crime in Sweden is under investigation for incitement to racial hatred, sending a clear message to cover up the truth or be demoted or fired.When police are hindered by political correctness citizen groups rise up. In response to the epidemic of rapes in Sweden a chapter of the nationalist movement Soldiers of Odin was created to patrol streets. Soldiers of Odin (SOO) is an international anti-immigrant street patrol group founded in Finland in October 2015 in response to the European refugee crisis. The group has members in Finland, Norway, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Britain, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. Soldiers of Odin started patrols in Sweden in March 2016, marching in several cities and towns. It has been described as a far-right, anti-migrant vigilante group and has been accused of being a front for a Nazi organization. However, Swedish girls have reported that they make them feel safer.If the Swedish Government would acknowledge that the increase in sexual assaults and other crime is a direct result of refugees’ cultural and religious beliefs, it would prevent the rise of nationalist movements in their country. What the Swedish government does not understand is that women in Islam are viewed as explicitly sexual beings in which every part of their body is thought to be erotic. The reason for being covered from head to toe is that a woman’s entire body is viewed as private parts. So, if you shake hands with her it is the same as touching her crotch. If she displays her hair, it is the equivalent of exposing her pubic hair. Every square inch of her is sexual.For this reason, Sharia Islamic Law not only justifies rape and sexual assault of infidel women and children; it incites extreme acts of brutality. Western noncompliant non-Muslim women are viewed as the epitome of impurity and disrespect. They are perceived as a personal affront, a cultural dishonor and a threat. How dare Swedish women think they have the same freedoms as Muslim men. Hence, rape is a method of shaming women into submission and restoring male honor. Gang rape is so prevalent because it functions as a fraternal ritual that restores migrant Muslim men’s honor, maintains their Islamic tradition and allows them to save face in a country that is not theirs. When Muslim clerics teach that women who do not wear headscarves are considered uncovered meat, then it should not be surprising that there is an epidemic of sexual assaults. For Muslim refugees, Swedish women are a sexual smorgasbord.

Dawn Perlmutter is the Director of the Symbol Intelligence Group and one of the leading subject matter experts (SME) in symbols, symbolic methodologies, unfamiliar customs and ritualistic crimes. She designed and developed Jihad-ID, a symbolic database of the signs, symbols and identifiers of global jihad.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265873/refugee-rape-gangs-sweden-dawn-perlmutter Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

"When parents shout at their children, when they want to
reprimand them, they call them Jews. Yes. All Arab families know this.
It is monumental hypocrisy not to see that this anti-Semitism begins as a
domestic one." — Smaïn Laacher

"I am not ashamed of what I
am. I am a Muslim, that is to say, submissive to Allah who created me
and who by his grace has harmoniously shaped me." — Salah Abdeslam, a
Belgium-born French national of Moroccan descent and the main suspect in
the November 13, 2015 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.

The Grand Mosque of Paris announced that it was withdrawing from
the Foundation for Islam of France, a new, government-sponsored
foundation charged with "contributing to the emergence of an Islam of
France that is fully anchored in the French Republic." In a statement,
the mosque, which represents 250 of the 2,500 of the mosques and Muslim
associations in France, said that it denounced "any form of interference
in the management of Muslim worship."

"An Algerian sociologist, Smaïn Laacher, with great courage, just
said in a documentary aired on Channel 3: 'It is a shame to deny this
taboo, namely that in the Arab families in France, and everyone knows it
but nobody wants to say it, anti-Semitism is sucked with mother's
milk.'" —Georges Bensoussan, a highly regarded Jewish historian of
Moroccan descent, who is being prosecuted for talking about
anti-Semitism among French Arabs.

"When parents shout at their children, when they want to
reprimand them, they call them Jews. Yes. All Arab families know this.
It is monumental hypocrisy not to see that this anti-Semitism begins as a
domestic one." — Smaïn Laacher, a French-Algerian sociologist, in a
documentary called, "Teachers in the Lost Territories of the Republic."

"Islamophobia is a weapon of intimidation and an invention to forbid debate." — Pascal Bruckner.

Three months after French authorities demolished the "Jungle"
migrant camp, migrants are returning to Calais at the rate of around 30 a
day. Most of them are unaccompanied minors hoping to smuggle their way
across the English Channel to Britain.

January 1. The Interior Ministry announced
the most anticipated statistic of the year: a total of 945 cars and
trucks were torched across France on New Year's Eve, a 17.5% increase
from the 804 vehicles burned during the annual ritual on the same
holiday in 2015. Car burnings, commonplace in France, are often
attributed to rival Muslim gangs that compete with each other for the
media spotlight over which can cause the most destruction. An estimated
40,000 cars are torched in France every year.

A
van burns during a recent riot in a Paris suburb. Car burnings,
commonplace in France, are often attributed to rival Muslim gangs that
compete with each other for the media spotlight. An estimated 40,000
cars are torched in France every year. (Image source: RT video
screenshot)

January 2. Approximately 3.7 million crimes were reported in France in 2016, a 4% increase over 2015, according to Le Figaro.
Seine-Saint-Denis, a Paris suburb which has one of the highest
concentrations of Muslims in France, ranks as the most dangerous part of
the country, with 18.2 attacks per 1,000 inhabitants. It is followed by
Paris, with 15.7 attacks per 1,000 inhabitants and Bouches-du-Rhône
with 11.5 attacks per 1,000 inhabitants.

January 2. The Criminal Court of Paris sentenced
Nicolas Moreau, a 32-year-old French jihadist, to ten years in prison
for fighting for the Islamic State. He is the brother of Flavien Moreau,
the first French jihadist to be sentenced
for such an offense upon his return from Syria in November 2014. Born
in South Korea, adopted by a French family at the age of 4, Nicolas
became a delinquent after the divorce of his adoptive parents. He
converted to Islam in prison, where he spent five years. Nicolas said he
fled the Islamic State after 17 months due to its "excesses."

January 3. Jean-Christophe Lagarde, the president of the Union of Democrats and Independents, a center-right political party, attributed
the closure of a PSA Peugeot-Citroën automobile factory to an excess of
religious demands by Muslim employees. "There have been difficulties
even in my department, for example in Aulnay-sous-Bois. It has never
been said, but part of the reason for the closure of PSA was due to the
omnipresence of religion and the fact that there were religious demands
at work, work stoppages, decreased productivity. PSA's decision to close
Aulnay was influenced by this aspect."

January 3. The Administrative Court of Poitiers dismissed
a lawsuit filed by the Coalition against Racism and Islamophobia (CRI),
which tried to ban a 14-page document aimed at preventing
radicalization in schools. The document called on teachers to monitor
several criteria, including "uncut long beards," "shaved hair," "Muslim
clothing," "refusal of tattoos," and "weight loss associated with
frequent fasting." The document also referred to behavior such as
"identity withdrawal," "selective exposure to the media," and "political
rhetoric" concerning Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq. The document urged
teachers to monitor closely students interested in the "history of early
Islam." The court emphasized the strictly internal nature of the
document, which was deemed to be "devoid of any legal effect" because it
contains "no mandatory provisions."

January 4. Of the 230 French jihadists who have been killed in Iraq and Syria, seven were killed by American drones, according to Le Monde.
"The French targets had a twofold status: they were military
objectives, the elimination of which is theoretically governed by the
law of war, and they were also targets of judicial proceedings in
France. In the name of the 'self-defense,' which the coalition states
claim, military logic prevailed over the right to legal defense," the
paper complained.

January 4. Jean-Sébastien Vialatte, the deputy mayor of Six-Four-Les-Plages, ordered
police to visit the Reynier Primary School there on two occasions after
he heard rumors that the school was requiring students to attend Arabic
language classes. The courses, which were optional, not mandatory, have
since been cancelled.

January 5. The Magistrate's Court of Rennes sentenced
a 34-year-old man to 17 months in prison on charges of domestic
violence for striking his female companion because she refused to
convert to Islam. The woman said the man had "profoundly changed" after
he visited Mali. "He has become radicalized," she said. "He promises
Allah will take revenge against the disbelievers who do not convert.
Religion has taken an increasingly important place in his life. He
believes he is good and all others are evil." The man denied he ever
"forced someone to be a Muslim." He added, "Before, I was like her, I
smoked, I drank, but it is over now."

January 5. Farid Benyettou, a 35-year-old former French jihadist who indoctrinated the gunmen who attacked the Charlie Hebdo
magazine in Paris in January 2015, admitted that he was partly to blame
for the violence. "I bear a share of responsibility, I cannot deny it,"
he said in an interview with Le Parisien.
"I preached hate, I distilled this ideology even though it was not me
who told him to commit this massacre. I served my prison sentence, I
paid my debt to society, but not my moral debt." He tells his story in a
new book, "My Jihad: Journey of a Repenter."

January 6. A statistical analysis
carried out by François Desouche, an influential French blog, found a
dramatic increase in the popularity of Muslim first names given to
children born in France during the past 20 years. In Paris, for example,
17.1% of babies born in 2016 received Muslim first names, up from 9.4%
in 1996. In Seine-Saint-Denis, a Paris suburb, 42.9% of babies born in
2016 received Muslim first names, up from 17.3% in 1996. The trend
repeats itself across France.

January 6. Zineb El Rhazoui, a 35-year-old Moroccan-born journalist, quit her job at Charlie Hebdo
because the magazine is now following an editorial line that "Mohammed
is no longer drawn" — as demanded by Islamists before the January 2015
attacks. She said Charlie Hebdo now feels "too alone to go to the
front." But our colleagues "must not have died for nothing. If it were
up to me, I would continue," she said.

January 6. The Nice Criminal Court acquitted
Pierre-Alain Mannoni, 45, for helping three Eritrean women who crossed
the border into France from Italy. Mannoni, a teacher-researcher at the
French national research center (CNRS), was arrested at the Turbie toll
booth just beyond the Italian border in October 2015 and charged with
"assisting the entry, movement and residence of irregular migrants." The
charge incurs five years in prison and €30,000 ($31,000) in fines. The
prosecutor argued that people are not allowed to help illegal migrants
move about the country. Mannoni said he was "protecting their dignity
and integrity." Christian Estrosi, the president of the Nice Côte d'Azur
Riviera region, said the ruling was "an insult to the work of the
security forces who put their life in danger to protect ours."January 10. Around 5,000 Jews emigrated from France to Israel in 2016, according to the Jewish Agency of Israel, which released the data to mark two years since attacks on the Charlie Hebdo
and on a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January 2015. The departures in
2016 add to the 7,900 who left in 2015 and 7,231 in 2014. In total,
since 2006, 40,000 French Jews have emigrated.

January 12. Salah Abdeslam — a Belgium-born French national of
Moroccan descent and the main suspect in the November 13, 2015 attacks
that killed 130 people in Paris — said, "I am not ashamed of what I am. I
am a Muslim, that is to say, submissive to Allah who created me and who
by his grace has harmoniously shaped me." Abdeslam is reportedly
receiving stacks of mail "from Catholics with questions about his faith,
from women who declare their love for him and say they want to bear his
child, from lawyers who offer their services, it is incessant," according to Libération.

January 12. A French couple were given suspended sentences
for selling Islamic State flags online. They were caught after
neighbors saw them boasting about their business in a television
documentary about jihadi recruitment and called the police.

January 16. Asian tourists are avoiding France due to fears over terrorism and spiraling crime, according to Le Parisien,
which interviewed Jean-François Zhou, President of the Chinese
Association of Travel Agencies in France. Some 1.6 million Chinese
tourists visited France in 2016, compared to 2.2 million in 2015, a 27%
decline. The number of tourists from South Korea also declined by 27%,
and the number of Japanese tourists declined by 39%. "Our tourists have
turned to Russia, which is less attractive but at least it is a safe
country," Zhou said. "For Putin, it is an economic windfall." Zhou
explained:

"The decline is explained above all to the scourge of
petty delinquency aimed especially at Chinese tourists. They are robbed
in the Palace of Versailles, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in front
of their hotel, when they exit the buses. In high season, there is not a
day without tourists being assaulted. I saw an 80-year-old man
seriously injured because he was trying to resist thieves. Women are
pushed and when they fall their bags are stolen with all their papers.
This has created a panic on Chinese social networks. The Chinese began
turning away from France last year."The police have increased their numbers to protect tourists. But
since the terrorist attacks, these forces have been mobilized elsewhere.
We want France to stop its laxity. We, along with my traveling
colleagues, are counting on the future government to get things done. I
have been in France for twenty-five years, and I myself have seen the
decline of France in terms of security. Before, the Chinese tour
operators deplored the insecurity in Italy, today it is France and more
particularly Paris and Marseilles which we speak. There are many regions
in France where tourism can be leisurely pursued, but Paris is ranked
No. 1 in Europe in terms of the increase in delinquency."

January 17. The Magistrate's Court in Paris acquitted
Pascal Bruckner, a renowned intellectual and author, on charges of
defamation after he remarked on the "28 minutes-Arte" television program
that pro-Muslim activist groups such as "The Indivisibles" (Les Indivisibles) and "The Republic's Natives" (Les Indigènes de la République)
were "ideological accomplices" of jihadism. The decision was hailed as a
"victory for the freedom of expression" in France, which does not have
legal protections such as the First Amendment to the United States
Constitution, guaranteeing the freedom of speech.

January 18. One of the suicide bombers who blew himself up outside
the Stade de France during the November 2015 attacks on Paris turned out
to be an Iraqi jihadist, according
to France's DGSE intelligence agency. Until now, only one of the three
bombers had been identified: a 20-year-old Frenchman living in Belgium.
DGSE believes that one of that man's accomplices, who was carrying a
fake Syrian passport, was from the Iraqi city of Mosul. He and the third
attacker, whose identity is still unknown, are believed to have slipped
into Europe with a group of refugees who landed on the Greek island of
Leros on October 3, 2015.

January 20. The Council of State (Conseil d'État), France's highest administrative court, ruled that the mosque in Stains (Centre Culturel et Islamique de Stains)
in Seine-Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, will remain closed.
The Salafist mosque, which was identified as the last place of prayer
for several French jihadists before they joined the Islamic State, was
shuttered in November 2016 as part of a state of emergency.

January 21. Kevin Guiavarch, a 24-year-old convert to Islam, was charged
with terrorism offenses after being extradited from Turkey. He is
believed to have been a member of both the Islamic State and the former
Al-Nusra Front. He was arrested in Turkey in June 2016 after leaving
Syria with his four wives and six children. Guiavarch, a Breton who
converted to Islam at the age of 14, is believed to have gone to Syria
in 2012.

January 23. The Grand Mosque of Paris announced that it was withdrawing from the Foundation for Islam of France (Fondation de l'Islam de France),
a new, government-sponsored foundation charged with "contributing to
the emergence of an Islam of France that is fully anchored in the French
Republic." In a statement, the mosque, which represents 250 of the
2,500 of the mosques and Muslim associations in France, said that it
denounced "any form of interference in the management of Muslim
worship." Others said the mosque's rector, Dalil Boubakeur, 76, was
angry that he was not named to be president of the foundation.

January 23. The Administrative Court of Marseilles effectively
terminated a project to build a €22 million ($23 million) mega-mosque
with a capacity for 7,000 worshippers. In July 2007, the municipality
granted a Muslim association a parcel of land in the 15th arrondissement
to build the Grand Mosque of Marseille,
but the project has been plagued by legal and financial problems. The
cornerstone was laid in 2010, but since then nothing else has been
built. In October 2016, the city terminated the lease for the land
because the association had not paid the rent since 2013. According to
the court, "the materiality of all the facts alleged against the
association does not appear to be seriously contestable."

January 23. Benoît Hamon, the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party, lashed out at critics of Islam:

"There is ultimately a desire to say that Islam is
incompatible with the Republic. This is not true. It is unbearable that
we continue to make the faith of millions of our compatriots a problem
in French society. Let us stop making Islam an adversary of the
Republic."

January 25. The trial began of Georges Bensoussan, a highly regarded Jewish historian of Moroccan descent, who is being prosecuted for talking about anti-Semitism among French Arabs. During a debate on Radio France Culture, he said:

"An Algerian sociologist, Smaïn Laacher, with great
courage, just said in a documentary aired on Channel 3: 'It is a shame
to deny this taboo, namely that in the Arab families in France, and
everyone knows it but nobody wants to say it, anti-Semitism is sucked
with mother's milk.'"

Bensoussan was referring to a documentary entitled "Teachers in the
Lost Territories of the Republic," aired on Channel 3 in October 2015.
In this documentary, Laacher, who is a French professor of Algerian
origin, said:

"Antisemitism is already awash in the domestic space. It
rolls almost naturally off the tongue, awash in the language. It is an
insult. When parents shout at their children, when they want to
reprimand them, they call them Jews. Yes. All Arab families know this.
It is monumental hypocrisy not to see that this anti-Semitism begins as a
domestic one."

Laacher was not prosecuted but Bensoussan was. The court's decision
will be rendered March 7. "This witch-hunt against Bensoussan is
symptomatic of the state of free speech today in France," wrote the French journalist Yves Mamou.

January 26. The Administrative Court of Bastia in Corsica validated
a burkini ban in the village of Sisco. Mayor Ange-Pierre Vivoni argued
the ban was necessary to avoid a repeat of fighting between local youths
and Muslims in August 2016, when five people were hurt. The court
rejected a similar ban in Ghisonaccio, due to a lack of evidence that
the garment was a threat to public order.

January 27. Pascal Bruckner, a renowned author and intellectual, in an essay entitled "An Imaginary Racism," wrote that Islamophobia is a "weapon of intimidation" and an "invention to forbid debate."

January 27. "The Halal Market: The Invention of a Tradition," a new book by anthropologist Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, argues
that "buying halal is not a religious obligation." Although the Koran
and Sunnah (the teachings and practices of Mohammed) prohibit pork,
blood and alcohol, they do not impose rules dictating behavior,
according to Bergeaud-Blackler.

"Eating halal is presented today as an obligatory practice for
Muslims, even though the term did not exist in the Muslim world before
it was exported by developed countries," she told FRANCE 24.
Bergeaud-Blackler, who has studied halal for the past 20 years, said the
market has flourished in non-Muslim countries because of immigration.
"There's a recent poll by the Montaigne Institute which shows that 40%
of France's Muslim population thinks eating halal is a pillar of Islam;
this notion is false," she said.In reality, the halal food industry is a product of the "random
convergence of neo-fundamentalism and neo-liberalism" during the early
1980s, Bergeaud-Blackler explained. "At the time, these two ideologies
were dominant on the international scene. Their convergence would change
the theological definition of halal from 'recommended' to 'required'
and which is a hallmark of fundamentalism," she said.

January 29. Three months after French authorities demolished the "Jungle" migrant camp, migrants are returning
to Calais at the rate of around 30 a day. Most of them are
unaccompanied minors hoping to smuggle their way across the English
Channel to Britain.

It is evident that there is no truth behind the International Federation of Journalists' lofty "respect for truth."

Participation by journalists
in political events, especially those which they are covering, is a
serious violation of Agence France-Presse's commitment to "rigorous
neutrality" and its pledge that it "is independent of the French
government and all other economic or political interests."

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) press release is based on a falsehood:
that AFP, relying on "misinformation from Israeli extremist websites,"
unfairly sanctioned its reporter Nasser Abu Baker, and includes a call
to action to hundreds of thousands of journalists. It is evident that
there is no truth behind the International Federation of Journalists'
lofty "respect for truth."

Nor is there any justice at the IFJ, which pretends to fight for
freedom of press and against discrimination, but which provides cover
and comfort to Abu Baker, and which, based on that falsehood, actively
discriminates against Israeli journalists, denies them their freedom of
press, and endangers their lives in the West Bank by sending the message
to Palestinian officials and journalists that the Israeli reporters are
not welcome there.

That Abu Bakr was a delegate to the Fatah Congress and also ran in the elections was first covered in the Palestinian media. There is nothing inaccurate about that.

The IFJ covered up the fact that its own executive committee
member ran for political office, and attacked AFP for supposedly
persecuting him with no basis.

It is evident that there is no truth behind the International Federation of Journalists' lofty "respect for truth."

"The journalist shall be aware of the danger of discrimination being
furthered by the media, and shall do the utmost to avoid facilitating
such discrimination based on, among other things, race, sex, sexual
orientation, language, religion, political or other opinions, and
national or social origins," declares the Declaration of Principles
of the International Federation of Journalists, the world's largest
organization of journalists that represents 600,000 journalists in 140
countries.

One might imagine, then, that this organization that defends press
freedom, truth and equality, would vigorously counter a boycott by the
Palestinian Journalists Syndicate of Israeli journalists, especially in a
discriminatory campaign that endangers Israelis
covering the West Bank by sending the message to Palestinian officials
and journalists that the Israeli reporters are not welcome there.

That presumably should be the position of an organization
which says it "promotes international action to defend press freedom and
social justice," but it is not. Far from condemning the Palestinian
Journalists Syndicate's boycott targeting Israelis, the International
Federation of Journalists has come to the defense of Nasser Abu
Baker, chairman of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and the key
prosecutor of the discriminatory campaign against Israelis. In fact, Abu
Baker, who has threatened Palestinian officials who dare to speak with
Israeli journalists, sits on the International Federation of
Journalists' executive committee.

Nasser Abu Baker (also spelled Abu Bakr) has also worked for years in
the West Bank as a reporter for Agence France-Presse, an influential
wire service which publishes in six languages. Following an exclusive exposé
by CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America)
in early December about the inherent conflict of interest posed by Abu
Baker's participation in the Seventh Fatah Congress and his failed
election bid to join the Fatah Revolutionary Council, the influential
Agence France-Press last month slapped him with a week's suspension and
withheld his salary. Participation by journalists in political events,
especially those they are covering, is a serious violation of Agence
France-Presse's commitment to "rigorous neutrality" and its pledge that it "is independent of the French government and all other economic or political interests."

Nasser Abu Baker

Enter the International Federation of Journalists, which suspended
its stated commitments to truth and opposition to discrimination with
its Febrary 2 statement
about Agence France-Presse's sanctions against Abu Baker. Issued
together with two other venerable outfits, the French Journalists
Syndicate and the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT), the
statement read (author's translation from French):

Journalists' unions SNJ, SNJ-CGT and CFDT, members of the
International Federation of Journalist (IFJ - 600,000 members
worldwide), were informed that Nasser Abu Baker, president of the
Palestinian Journalists Union, member of the IFJ Executive Committee,
and journalist at AFP in Ramallah, had been sanctioned following a
dispute with executives.Despite the union's interventions with the management, AFP decided
abruptly and without further recourse to suspend the work contract of
our colleague by a layoff of one week (22 to 28 January 2017) and to
deprive him of his salary. The accusations made by the Directorate are
mainly based on misinformation from extremist Israeli website claiming
that our colleague was elected at the recent Fatah Congress. This was
proven inaccurate.AFP had already tried to prevent Abu Baker from attending the IFJ
Congress in France this summer. Again, following information from the
same circles [sic].The union reaction forced AFP to reverse a decision contrary to the
right of journalists to be full citizens and to be able to exercise
union activities.The French unions denounce this persistence in attacking our
colleague. We know the extreme difficulty of doing his job in a country
where Palestinian journalists are particularly exposed to the Israeli
military authorities.Our three organizations will inform the IFJ of this matter and will
call for the mobilization of all of our members in the world to denounce
this attitude against a union officer.We demand the full payment of our colleague's salary.We request to be received by the Directorate with the representatives
of the IFJ to put an end to these systematic attacks against one of our
colleagues.

Aside from the revelation that Agence France-Presse finally took
steps (albeit insufficient) against Abu Baker, the International
Federation of Journalists' release provides an illuminating window into
the corrupt state of affairs at the world's largest organization for
journalists.

First, the International Federation of Journalists' Declaration of
Principles, declares, "Respect for truth and for the right of the public
to truth is the first duty of the journalist." The International
Federation of Journalists' press release, however, is based on a
falsehood.

The Federation falsely states: "The accusations made by the [Agence
France-Presse] Directorate are mainly based on misinformation from
extremist Israeli websites claiming that our colleague was elected at
the recent Fatah Congress. This was proven inaccurate."

Moreover, the organization's Declaration of Principles included a
call to action to hundreds of thousands of journalists worldwide --
based on that falsehood.

As of this writing, the International Federation of Journalists has
yet to respond to requests that it identify the "extremist Israeli
websites" which supposedly claimed that Abu Bakr was "elected at the recent Fatah Congress" (emphasis added). As noted earlier, it was already exposed in English that Abu Bakr, an Agence France-Presse reporter, ran -- and lost -- in the December Fatah elections.

That Abu Bakr was a delegate to the Fatah Congress and also ran in the elections was first covered in the Palestinian media. There is nothing inaccurate about that.

Queries to the International Federation of Journalists about plans to
issue a new press release to make clear that Abu Baker did indeed
participate in the Fatah Congress and run for the Fatah Revolutionary
Council, or to correct the February 2 release, have gone unanswered.

Agence France-Presse was not the only journalistic entity to
recognize that running for political office is a stark violation of a
journalist's obligation to maintain non-partisanship. The Foreign Press
Association in Israel, which represents some 480 journalists working in
Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, revoked the membership of two other
journalists who ran in the Fatah elections this past December: Moussa al
Shaer, a cameraman for NHK TV 9 (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), and
Mohammed Allaham of Al Arabiyeh. (Abu Baker is not a member of the
Foreign Press Association, so it was not in any position to take steps
against him.) The Foreign Press Association statement about those
journalists read:

The FPA wishes to clarify that members pursuing political
careers CANNOT retain their FPA membership. The FPA Constitution
clearly states that people who are in government or those who actively
seek political office or are engaged in public relations cannot under
any circumstances be members, given the unequivocal conflict of
interests inherent in the situation.Consequently the Board has decided to cancel the membership of the
persons who recently actively pursued political office. As a one-time
concession, an FPA member who is no longer involved in any
political/governmental/PR activity may re-apply for membership after a
six month cooling off period. The FPA will inform the relevant media
offices of this decision.

While the Foreign Press Association issued a strong statement and
took appropriate action to send the clear signal that running for office
is a clear conflict of interests with journalistic work, the
International Federation of Journalists covered up the fact that its own
executive committee member ran for office, and attacked Agence
France-Presse for supposedly persecuting him with no basis.

Second, there is also the problem that the International Federation
of Journalists press release ignores Abu Baker's indefensible boycott
campaign, first exposed
last May against Israeli journalists. It is apparently partly in light
of that activity that Agence France-Presse took steps against Abu Baker.
According to the International Federation of Journalists' press
release, Agence France-Presse tried to prevent Abu Baker from attending
the International Federation of Journalists' Congress in France this
past summer, a move that the International Federation of Journalists
blocked.

Nasser Abu Baker has threatened Palestinian officials who dared to speak with Israeli journalists, as documented in May 2016.

As deputy chairman of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, the Agence France-Presse reporter warned:

I call upon all male and female colleagues/journalists to
boycott any Palestinian official, regardless of how senior he/she is,
who conducts an interview with Israeli journalists and Israeli media...
this poisonous media whose only goal is to broadcast dissent and incite
against our people. Their media, which is directed by their government,
is one of the tools of the occupation. Therefore, the time has come for a
comprehensive boycott of their media. The Syndicate will have a clear
position on this and I plead with all the journalists to abide. We will
publish the name of any official who gives an interview to their media
from this moment.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate also formally backed the
boycott, putting out a similar statement, which was covered in
Palestinians48.net, an Israeli-Arab site. The site reported
that the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate called on its members and
Palestinian officials to boycott Israeli media "in light of the
continued and escalating Israeli assaults on Palestinian journalists."
The Syndicate said in a statement that "Israeli journalists and Hebrew
media outlets enter the lands of the State of Palestine and work there
together with -- and under the protection -- of the Israeli occupation
army." The Syndicate also called on "all Palestinian officials not to
deal or give interviews or statements to Israeli reporters, pointing out
that it will follow up on the implementation of this decision,
including taking positions against those who violate."

Abu Baker posted a similar statement
announcing the boycott, signed by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate
"general secretariat," to his Facebook account last February, and
subsequently removed the page following an investigation. [1]

The International Federation of Journalists has so far failed to
explain how its silence on Palestinian Journalists Syndicate's
discriminatory campaign against Israelis is compatible with the
organization's stated belief that journalists should "do the utmost to
avoid facilitating such discrimination based, on among other things ...
national or social origins." Indeed, the International Federation of
Journalists' embrace and defense of Abu Baker, the leading figure behind
the campaign endangering Israeli journalists, runs directly counter to
the group's codes.

An additional key principle of the International Federation of
Journalists also appears to have presented a challenge for Abu Baker:
"Respect for truth and for the right of the public to truth is the first
duty of the journalist."

For example, Abu Baker attended a conference in Jordan in March last year where he made the completely unfounded allegation that Israeli hospitals are treating 5000 ISIS members, as reported last May.

According to a March 29, 2016 article in Al Watan, a Gaza-based independent news website:

Abu Baker said in an interview with Mawteny radio that he
attended the conference of Media and Terrorism [in Jordan] in order to
expose the crimes and practices of the Israeli occupation. He said, "We
asked Arab media people to intensify their effort to expose the Nazi and
racist crimes of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people
and to bring back the Palestinian cause to the center of the Arab
media's attention."He said that the Israeli occupation has implemented its DAESH [ISIS]
practices against the Palestinians by destroying Palestinian villages,
daily executions, arrests and the targeting of children and journalists
in the field. He held the Netanyahu government responsible for
legitimizing these practices against the Palestinian people.

The International Federation of Journalists' refers to "calumny,
slander, libel, unfounded accusations" as "professional offenses." The
world's largest organization of journalists also has yet to explain
whether it believes that Abu Baker's accusations regarding supposed
Israeli Nazi and ISIS practices fall in that category or whether they
reflect "respect for truth."

In any event, it is evident that there is no truth behind the
International Federation of Journalists' lofty "respect for truth." Nor
is there any justice at the International Federation of Journalists,
which pretends to fight for freedom of press and against discrimination,
but which provides cover and comfort to Abu Baker, and which actively
discriminates against Israeli journalists, denies them their freedom of
press, and which endangers their lives by sending the message to
Palestinian officials and journalists that the Israeli reporters are not
welcome there.

Journalists who do genuinely care about these values should take
note: The International Federation of Journalists does not represent
you.

Tamar Sternthal is director of the Israel office of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America).

[1]
The boycott campaign against Israeli journalists has endangered their
safety, and many have simply stopped reporting from Palestinian areas,
according to a veteran Israeli journalist who refused to be named
because of his ongoing work in Palestinian areas. For years, Israeli
journalists moved freely through Palestinian areas, secure in the
knowledge that they enjoyed protection from their Palestinian
colleagues, he told this writer last spring.

That is no longer the case, he lamented. He reported that he avoids
demonstrations and crowds, fearing that the Palestinian journalists upon
whom he once relied for protection would be the first to call in forces
to expel him, or worse. He described his work visit to Bethlehem last
Christmas, in which he repeatedly evaded Palestinian journalists who
might recognize him. Before the boycott, "if something bad were to
happen, we would have someone to count on," he noted.

Tamar Sternthal is director of the Israel office of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America).Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9963/international-federation-of-journalists Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.